I was watching my daughter last week when we were in Yosemite. She was climbing every rock, gathering armfuls of snow and pretending to be an ice harvester. I stopped to take her picture so when she’s a teenager, she can remember herself as this: confident, adventurous, living in her imagination, wearing a baby blanket as a cape and not a concern in the world as to what anyone thinks about her. It got me thinking about how enlightenment is not a quest for something out there, it is a remembering. Specifically, a remembering of the Self.
Who you are and who you are not
When we think about who we are, we usually name things like our profession, gender, relationship status etc. These things are not you however. They are perhaps current, personal descriptions but they are not your source. We often identify with these relative states which causes a great deal of stress when they change. And they always change. Since anything relative can change, yet you can remain, then none of these things can be you. You can only be what doesn’t change and the only thing that doesn’t change is what is not relative, the one, indivisible, whole consciousness field. It is perceived as your inner witness.
Smriti vs. Samskara
If you remember yourself as a child, depending on circumstances, likely you can remember a sense of freedom and carefreeness that…
